All large panel systems rely on their own dead weight and the friction this produced to hold everything together “house of cards fashion”

Assembly: cranes lifted panels into place where they were located onto bolts.

Collapse: In May 1968 disaster struck when a tenant on the 18th floor of a 22-storey TWA block at Ronan Point lit her stove, igniting a gas leak. The resulting explosion of 3-12psi (per square inch) pressure in her flat was not large, but it removed load-bearing wall panels and the south-east corner of the building slid to the ground. Pictured below is the Ronan Point Estate after the explosion in the tower on the left.

January 13, 2010

January 13, 2010

Architects: Jaume Back & Gabriel Mora

East, South and West facades have a double skin consisting of red stucco divided by vertical openings from floor to ceiling in the interior, and an outer skin separated by 60 cm from the inner one, consisting of panels of wooden slats that can be moved freely according to the needs of the occupants

These mobile panels provide an exterior space around all the dwellings that extends the interior space visually

The terrace of the living room can be understood as an interior or an exterior according to the position of the panels

January 13, 2010

Renzo Piano erects a monumental tower of light with severe, static forms covered by a shell of glass, transformed by the light filtering through its narrow chequerboard of translucent plates

Blocks are mounted in a steel grid that allows them to move up to 4 mm during earthquaks

13,000 custom glass blocks, measuring 42.8 x 42.8 cm (supposedly based on a sub-multiple of a Hermes scarf), are smooth on one side and undulated on the outer side

Exterior surfaces were mirror-varnished by hand; the interior surfaces are textured

Meets Japan’s stringent seismic codes: The structure of the building consists of a flexible steel structure, strategically articulated with visco-elastic dampers, from which cantilevered floors span to support the suspended glass facade

January 13, 2010

Total of 4330 glass discs hung from a metal substructure that is directly mounted on the existing concrete cladding of the department store

The glass discs are made of sandblasted laminated glass, including a special dicroic foil

These discs are treated with a special iridescent foil, so during the day the atmospheric and weather changes influence the degree of reflection and absorption of light and color on the glass circles, so that from different viewing points the appearance of each disc and the total surface changes constantly according to those external conditions that are beyond human control.

At night, a special lighting scheme illuminates the discs by reflecting the dynamics of the weather conditions hat happened during the day

At night, the lighting design developed for the façade additionally starts to interact with the material condition of the glass discs.

By placing behind each of the glass discs an LED-light source and by controlling the lights digitally one by one, the possibilities to manipulate color and light emission become endless

Recording day-to-day weather conditions and processing the data with the computer before projecting them in transformed version onto the glass skin is just one out of many possibilities of the technology used

The façade solution also has the potential to be adapted for special occasions and can be changed over time according to seasons, fashion events and artistic inspirations

Whatever visual information is projected onto the discs, it will be transformed due to the material conditions of the glass disc and foils